


a brighter world beyond myself

by brella



Category: Fire Emblem Echoes: Mou Hitori no Eiyuu Ou | Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia
Genre: F/F, Meaningful Hugs, Missing Scene, Seafaring
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-14
Updated: 2017-11-14
Packaged: 2019-02-02 10:28:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12724860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brella/pseuds/brella
Summary: A day's journey across the sea from Novis, under a canopy of stars, Mae says something without thinking, the same way she says everything.





	a brighter world beyond myself

**Author's Note:**

  * For [strikinglight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/strikinglight/gifts).



> For Meg, from the "things you said" meme: "things you said when you were scared."

A day's journey across the sea from Novis, under a canopy of stars, Mae says something without thinking, the same way she says everything.

She's never been very good with the names of constellations. Boey would know them, being a nerd. He's better at that stuff—facts, records, things preserved and quantified. Mae takes one look at a scroll and she's already asleep. She wishes, when Celica asks if she can recall the name of a sparse arrangement that could form the shape of a vase, or maybe a river, that she had tried harder; if only because, had she known the answer, it could have replaced what comes out instead.

"I'm not going to let anything happen to you, Celica."

Okay, so that one's not going to be showing up on an astronomical map anytime soon. Still, it holds more of her than she had planned, more of her than she's ever given anybody. _I will die for you in a second_ , it says, _and it will be something I can be proud of for the rest of eternity._

She's never been too great with poetry, either. Cheesy stuff? Not her forte.

The sea goes quiet around them when Celica turns, hair wavering in the night wind. It remains that way, or maybe Mae just forgets to hear it, for the three strides it takes her to reach Mae and, without a word, pull her into her arms.

Mae hugs her back fiercely, as she does every time. Celica's chin comes to rest on her shoulder, and her cheek brushes Mae's ear, and they stay like that, rocking idly in tandem with the ship.

It takes Mae maybe two seconds to notice that Celica is shivering, and that her heart is going a mile a minute.

"Are you cold?" Mae asks, drawing away immediately and running her hands up and down Celica's bare arms. "I can go steal Boey's blanket! He doesn't need it."

"No, no," Celica laughs, and anyone else but Mae wouldn't notice the shaky foundation of it, wouldn't notice when she subtly wipes at one of her eyes and looks away. "Thank you, but that's not—"

It clicks into place in Mae's mind before she can finish: the shaking, the pale face, the Terrors they had left behind, the arrow Mae had barely dodged. And she feels about fifty ways of awful.

"Oh," she says softly. "Oh, Celica, are you..."

Celica shakes her head, and when she does, her earrings flash in the moonlight, making the faintest jingling sound.

"I'm all right," she replies—insists, really, and Mae figures she should know better by now than to expect Celica to admit it when she's upset. "Somehow I'm always all right, thanks to you."

Mae's heart jumps a little at that, because she's always been one of those suckers who builds purpose from being needed. She preens a little bit, jokingly, posing in the moonlight.

"Well, yeah, I _am_ pretty great, yanno; so—"

"Mae, whatever safety you might bring me isn't worth much to me at all if you don't keep some for yourself as well," Celica interjects gently. For a sliver of time, they're children again, crouched under the eaves of the priory in the noontime, and Celica is chiding her for skinning her knee, while Mae tries to look tough and not cry. "You matter far too much to me for me to accept anything less. I'll say this a hundred times if I have to: you don't need to worry about me."

The firmness with which she declares it, almost regal, would intimidate Boey into deferring to her if he was here, but not Mae. Never Mae.

"Oh _well_ now, that is about the fattest lie I have ever heard out of you, missy, and don't think that just cuz we're away from the priory Nomah'll let it go if you start straying from the righteous path," Mae exclaims sternly, and Celica has to sputter to hide a laugh at that, mouth crumpling comically. Egged on by the positive response, Mae starts to play it up, gently punching Celica in the shoulder and faking indignance. "' _I don't need to worry about you..._ ' Please! Who else is gonna have your back? _Boey_? Yeah, _that'll_ help me rest easy at night—"

"I can _hear_ you," Boey's muffled voice cuts in from directly under their feet, where the berth is, and it startles them both so spectacularly that they simultaneously shriek and leap back, clapping their hands over their mouths.

After a pregnant silence, Mae is the first to dissolve into giggles, and Celica follows pretty quickly after. They end up leaning on each other, laughing until there's no breath left for it. An arrhythmic thumping sounds from below the deck—Boey, no doubt, crankily whacking the ceiling with the handle of a mop to protest the racket they're making, periodically knocked off-beat by Genny grabbing his arm and telling him to please mind his temper—and Mae tries to stifle herself with all her might, even as her eyes start to leak.

It isn't really that funny. Boey getting a stick up his butt over their antics is such an old bit by now that Mae is kind of surprised it hasn't started making her yawn. But maybe it's the presence of it that lends it meaning—the idea that there are still things to laugh about, old and familiar though they might be, even as they sail across unknown waters away from all they have ever known; even as the land is dying around them, even as a profound and gnawing sorrow will sometimes shadow Celica's lovely eyes, for only a second, when she thinks none of them are watching.

Now, though, as Celica politely mutes a guffaw behind her hand, biting her lip and scrunching her eyes shut, Mae _is_ watching. And boy, is she glad of it. She wouldn't miss this for the two kingdoms combined: Celica, and a constellation she doesn't know, and the sound of the ocean, and something stronger than fear. A promise unspoken.

Maybe they really will be okay.

**Author's Note:**

> Isn't it neat how probably 75% of everyone in Celica's army is a little bit in love with her but none of them even comes close to Mae


End file.
